Description

The great majority of the Iyo-Shōami school works is in low relief carving, line carving, flat inlay, large areas of raised inlay or mixed inlay. The common characteristic of most Shōami schools, i.e. nunome inlay, is rarely found in the work of this school, whose style is simple and naive and yet, not without interest.

Early Iyo-Shōami artists who had their origins in the Kyō-Shōami school and who worked for the families of the Matsudaira and Hisamatsu were Ietake (家武) and Morimine (森峯) (around the Genroku era, 1688-1704). Subsequent Iyo-Shōami artists used either the character “Ie” (家), “Yoshi” (吉), “Mori” (森) or “Mori” (盛) in their names and are grouped according to these characters.